Wilson's Heart
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: This is the follow on to my other story 'House's Head' and has been a very long time in the making - written in the same format as my other story it details certain scenes from the episode 'Wilson's Heart' from Wilsons POV and fills in some of the gaps
1. Chapter 1

**Wilson's Heart**

**7**

As Wilson walked away from House's office later on that evening he began to reflect on just how much his best friend meant to him – even if he himself didn't necessarily mean that much to House in return. Amber, the love of his life, now lay in a coma teetering on the very edge between life and death, and it appeared as though there wasn't anything very much that anybody could do to help her – anyone that was apart from House.

He was the key to unlocking what it was that was wrong with her, Wilson was at least sure of that. He was their only hope of saving the woman he loved – that was if they could prise the truth from an already compromised brain first.

He realised the risks… the insurmountable odds if House, his friend, his very best of friends in fact was to go through with this. The chances of something going wrong were great, he might be risking his best friend's life to save the life of the woman he loved, only to lose them both anyway in the end. Wilson didn't know what he'd do without Amber – she was the only woman he'd ever known who'd completely understood what made him tick. In all the time he'd known her she'd never complained about the long working hours which kept them both apart for so long – this time they'd spent separated from each other only seemed to make the few moments they'd managed to steel together all the more sweeter – and not even House popping round to the flat or ringing up at all hours of the day and night had appeared to present a problem for her. She'd known how to deal with him. Amber had made him so happy, made his life complete, and his heat soar.

However Wilson also couldn't imagine his life without House either – he couldn't even remember a time when the slightly older man hadn't been a part of his life. He thought about everything he'd done for House over the years, all those unpaid favours, just how many times he'd stuck his neck out and put his own very reputation on the line to protect his best friend, although even so he still doubted very much whether House owed him his life. House was his best friend, Wilson needed him as much as the Diagnostician needed the younger Oncologist as a crutch to lean on whenever something didn't go quite according to plan or when the rough waves of life threatened to sweep him off his already unstable legs. He loved him, and he knew deep down in the recesses of his own heart that House loved him too, in his own way. He wasn't a bad man – he was damaged, angry with the world, defensive, afraid of failure and of getting hurt, and living with more physical pain everyday than any of them could possibly imagine – this often made him prone to rash decision making, impulsive as he was, and yes he'd made a lot of bad choices in his life and would continue to do so, but no, never could Wilson have described his friend as a bad man, and despite his cold exterior House's heart had always been in the right place.

Even so Wilson knew that he would never be able to forgive himself if Amber died and he'd known that there was something more he might have been able to do to prevent that from happening. Maybe he'd also never be able to live with himself if something was to happen to House as a result of something he'd asked him to do… maybe either way Wilson couldn't win…

But he'd made his decision.

It wasn't going to be easy, but this was something _he had_ to do.

He had no intention of abandoning House, if his best friend agreed to do this he'd be there for him through every stage of the operation – and Wilson knew that if House really was a true friend he'd do this one thing for him just this once.


	2. Chapter 2

**8**

Wilson looked down at House's frightened and tear stained face as he sat upon the operating table – head manacled in place by several sheaths of cold and sterilised steel as Chase gently inserted the electrodes which they hoped to use to gently stimulate their friend and colleague's injured brain through the holes he'd already drilled in his skull. House could feel no pain, but the anaesthetic had done nothing to numb the terror which was prompted by the very thought of such a procedure in his state of health – he was a doctor, there was little any of them could do to protect him from the reality of what was now happening to him, nor to spare him from the truth about the risks he was taking with his own life. The tears had first started to flow from his bloodshot and swollen eyes, dark and sunken inside his skull with exhaustion, as the anaesthesiologist had proceeded to inject the thick and cloudy liquid into the IV line in the back of the middle aged Diagnostician's pale hand and House had shakily counted down from ten, waiting for the inevitable vale of sleep to envelop him before the doctors could commence with the first stage of the operation. Although his friend had spent his fair share of time on this side of the hospital bed since the infarction the doctor had still had far more experience at playing the physician than the patient and Wilson had kept a comforting hand upon his friend's slightly cold and shivering shoulder until he'd fallen asleep, wanting him to know that he was still there – part of him wished that House could remain blissfully unconscious for the duration of the procedure, that they could gain access to the deeply buried information they required by some other less invasive means than this… but this really was the only way.

House's complexion was deathly pale, probably as a result of the series head trauma he'd already sustained and of the strain which had subsequently been placed upon his already fragile body over the past few hours, and Wilson's heavy heart immediately went out to him. He realised that there was some small part of his friend that felt responsible for Amber's current state, and even though Wilson himself didn't blame his best friend for what was now happening he couldn't stop House from blaming himself, and he couldn't take the weight of House's woes away from his slightly slumped shoulders. It had been House's subconscious mind after all that had tried to press upon him so urgently the fact that Amber too had been on the bus, sending him a series of dreams and hallucinatory encrypted messages to decipher, but the exact series of events which had prompted her to be there in the lead up to the accident in the first place had continued to evade him – and House being House simply couldn't cope with the fact that he didn't know all the answers, he hadn't been able to solve the case of his own accord, and so he'd rather risk his own life in his pursuit of answers than let the issue go.

Wilson sighed as House directed his tired eyes up at him and he forced a small smile. Looking down into his empty and frightened eyes, like a child, part of him theorised that it was also probably partly down to House's self-destructive nature which allowed him to put himself through such a procedure, even at the potential cost to his own life, when so many others would have just said 'no', too terrified by their prospects, dubious and uncertain at best, to take such an unnecessary risk. It was a side of his personality which Wilson had so often fought to protect his friend from in the past, a side which allowed the older man to overdose on Vicodin, to ignore all potential risk factors and the danger he presented to his own health, and which prompted him to conceal his pain from those closest to him, even when Wilson as his best friend could clearly see the extent of his suffering every single day. Despite this however Wilson was slightly ashamed to have to confess to himself that this was the one occasion he could not bring himself to stop House from doing this, he couldn't save him from himself this time because no matter how much he wanted to there was still a significant part of him that wanted his friend to do this, he was the one who'd asked it of him after all, and instead the young Oncologist felt incredibly grateful to his best friend. His own curiosity may have finally got the better of him but Wilson could see that there was also a part of House which was afraid of losing him if he didn't, and that meant that the slightly older man _did_ care – it was after all a risk which if he hadn't been prepared to take Amber would have surely already been dead.

His heart broke for House, the guilt was almost suffocating as he stood watching his friend look up at him through dark, miserable eyes set within his pale, and tear stained face; the gratitude swelled in his heart, already swollen and bleeding from the pounding it had taken from the surge of the other raw and conflicting emotions he'd been forced to play host to over the previous few days; concern, confusion, anger, frustration, fear and loss, relief and grief, renewed hope, and now self-loathing, and once again the horrendous sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and the despair prompted by the possibility of losing his best friend.

He couldn't imagine placing himself in a time and a place when House might no longer be a part of his life… he'd been an almost constant now for longer than Wilson cared to remember, and had been even more reliant upon the slightly younger man's friendship and constant watchful eye in the years since the infarction. A lot had changed in Wilson's life, some things for the better and some things for the worse, but House had remained the same. The thought of losing him made his heart burst and his stomach twist and turn like a knife, for he could not escape the realisation that after tonight that time might be closer than he thought.

He could see that there was no obvious choice in the matter, if they wanted to save Amber's life then this really was the only way – but Wilson realised that if something was to happen to House as a direct result of something he'd asked him to do, then it would certainly break his heart – and so he looked back down at his friend with sad liquid brown and sympathetic eyes, a small meek smile turning the corners of his thin lips, as he squeezed House's cold shoulder reassuringly in a pathetic and what he realised must have seemed in that moment like an insignificant gesture of comfort, in a bit to reassure himself as much as anyone else in the room, and the slightly older man who was now screwed down to the operating table that everything was going to be alright.


End file.
